Blogs

My article, How to Encode to HEVC: A Simple Guide for H.265 First Timers, just appeared on StreamingMedia.com. I did a lot of testing with x.265 and the MainConcept HEVC codecs to understand the quality/encoding time tradeoffs of their various features. If you’re starting to produce with either of these codecs, you’ll find it a useful primer.  Click here to …

An interesting story on Silverlight, Flash and HTML5 just appeared on StreamingMedia.com. By way of background, Panopto is a lecture and presentation capture and sharing platform used by leading academic institutions and Fortune 500 companies around the world. The company originally based their products around Silverlight, but had to change because Chrome will soon no longer load the Silverlight plug-in.  …

My article, The State of Video Codecs 2015, from the Streaming Media Sourcebook, is up on StreamingMedia.com. Here are the first few paragraphs to let you know what I covered.  Video compression is the critical enabler of all video streaming, and today we’re at a codec crossroads unlike any that we’ve experienced. Though H.264 remains firmly entrenched as the go-to …

As mentioned previously, I’m producing a free webinar entitled Replacing Flash with the Media Source Extensions/Encrypted Media Extensions on March 16, at 1:00 PM EST. It’s sponsored by Onstream Media. You can read the description and signup here.  To supplement the information that I compiled, I asked a number of collegues the following questions: For computer distribution –           Assuming your …

I’m producing a free webinar entitled Replacing Flash with the Media Source Extensions/Encrypted Media Extensions on March 16, at 1:00 PM EST. It’s sponsored by Onstream Media. Here’s the description.  Flash has dominated the streaming media landscape much longer than anticipated because HTML5-based solutions lacked necessities like adaptive streaming, digital rights management, live streaming, close captions, or even true streaming, …

My course, Video Compression for Web, Disc and PC/TV/Console Playback, is an entry-level video compression course designed to help newbies quickly get up to speed on compression technologies and producing for the various platforms listed in the title. It now has 119 students, the latest of which, Ian Carpenter, shared his thoughts in this five star review.  Jan’s knowledge of …

It’s personally gratifying that readers continue to find my book, Producing Streaming Video for Multiple Screen Delivery, useful. Here are comments from the latest five-star review.  I was assigned a Video Conversion and Compression project at work, and I began to look for a good source of information on the subject. I’m glad that I found this book, because it …

As I’ve observed previously, one of the benefits I get speaking before technical audiences is to hear their insites and experiences. I learned two very valuable nuggets of information from my most recent talk with the VideoTLV group in Tel Aviv.  The first related to the benefit of encoding H.264 and WebM files when creating a single file experience to …

So, YouTube finally went HTML5 first with Flash Fallback, triggering another round of Flash is Dead articles. Hey, didn’t Flash die when Apple shipped the iPad without it? I remember reading lots of articles back then telling me it was so. Well, in truth, it’s a lot truer now, but don’t send flowers to Adobe quite yet, as Flash will …

Sorry for the late notice, the webinar is at 2:00 PM EST, January 28, 2015, and is sponsored by OnStream. Sign up and you’ll get pinged when the archived version is available. Click here to register. Here’s the description: Most streaming producers must distribute to three sets of screens: desktop, mobile, and TV. There are multiple technologies for doing so, including …